The latest example, found via Michael Scott is that the Sixth Circuit appeals court has overturned a district court ruling, and is now saying that a labor union can be sued for violating the CFAA because it asked members to email and call an employer many times, in an effort to protest certain actions. Now some of the volume may have hurt the business, but does it reach the level of hacking? What’s really troubling is even just the focus on emails:The e-mails wreaked more havoc: they overloaded Pulte’s system, which limits the number of e-mails in an inbox; and this, in turn, stalled normal business operations because Pulte’s employees could not access business-related e-mails or send e-mails to customers and vendors

“It looked like they were just going after white guys, white people,” Roffers told Wisconsin’s Newsradio 620.But while some witness accounts suggest the attacks are race-based, law enforcement officials say they have no evidence to prove it.

There was “no confession or anything else” to suggest the July 29 attacks in Philadelphia were “racially motivated,” Philadelphia Police Department First Deputy Commissioner Richard Ross told FoxNews.com.

“You can’t just simply look at the race of the offender and the race of the victim and say it’s ethnic intimidation. It may be, but we’re not sure. Does it give us pause? Yes it does,” Ross said.

Without a confession, a witness account or some epithet overheard by the victim, no charges will be filed related to ethnic intimidation or a hate crime, Ross said.

“If we don’t know and can’t prove it, we can’t charge it,” he said. “It’s just a very difficult charge to prove … We’re in the business of what we can prove, not what we think.”

“What you really have here is a trans-Atlantic clash,” said Franz Werro, who was born and raised in Switzerland and is now a law professor at Georgetown University. “The two cultures really aren’t going in the same direction when it comes to privacy rights. “For instance, in the United States, Mr. Werro said, courts have consistently found that the right to publish the truth about someone’s past supersedes any right to privacy. Europeans, he said, see things differently: “In Europe you don’t have the right to say anything about anybody, even if it is true.”

Mr. Werro says Europe sees the need to balance freedom of speech and the right to know against a person’s right to privacy or dignity, concepts often enshrined in European laws. The European perspective was shaped by the way information was collected and used against individuals under dictators like Franco and Hitler and under Communism. Government agencies routinely compiled dossiers on citizens as a means of control.

A federal judge has ruled that an inmate does not have a constitutionally protected right to matzoh and grape juice.Christopher Henry, who was convicted of first-degree sodomy, claimed “permanent trauma” and malnourishment and requested nearly $10 billion in damages for what he called a violation of his First Amendment right to religious freedom.

Oddly enough, Henry didn’t request matzoh for Passover, the Jewish holiday during which it is traditionally eaten. Instead, Henry claimed he had a right to have the unleavened bread served daily and grape juice every Friday.

But on August 2, U.S. Southern District Judge Shira Scheindlin held that the Rikers Island jail could deny Henry his request in the interests of maintaining order and keeping costs reasonable.

While studying the technology, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania overheard conversations that included descriptions of undercover agents and confidential informants, plans for forthcoming arrests and information on the technology used in surveillance operations.“We monitored sensitive transmissions about operations by agents in every Federal law enforcement agency in the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security,” wrote the researchers, who were led by computer science professor Matt Blaze and plan to reveal their findings Wednesday in a paper at the Usenix Security Symposium in San Francisco.

Their research also shows that the radios can be effectively jammed using a pink electronic child’s toy and that the standard used by the radios “provides a convenient means for an attacker” to continuously track the location of a radio’s user.

The veteran broadcaster Tavis Smiley and the author and Princeton University Professor Cornel West are in the midst of a 15-city, cross-country trek they have dubbed “The Poverty Tour: A Call to Conscience.” The tour comes on the heels of last week’s deficit agreement, which has been widely criticized for excluding a tax hike on the wealthy, as well as any measures to tackle high unemployment. “Any legislation that doesn’t extend unemployment benefits, doesn’t close a single corporate loophole, doesn’t raise one cent in terms of new revenue in terms of taxes on the rich or the lucky, allows corporate America to get away scot-free again—the banks, Wall Street getting away again—and all these cuts ostensibly on the backs of everyday people,” says Smiley.

“People are saying it’s a race issue now—blacks against Asians,” said Mykel Douglas, a black youth worker and resident of Winson Green, the working-class district northwest of Birmingham city center where the incident occurred. “It’s like the ethnic groups are at war with each other.”Outside the family home of one of the dead men, identified by local media as Haroon Jahan, a group of young Asians—mainly ethnic Pakistanis—vowed vengeance. “People are very angry,” said a bearded man in a shalwar kameez who declined to give his name. “There’s going to be retaliation. An eye for an eye.”

In May, the Rochester Police Department arrested a woman on a charge of obstructing governmental administration after she videotaped several officers’ search of a man’s car. The charge is a criminal misdemeanor.The only problem? Videotaping a police officer in public view is perfectly legal in New York state — and the woman was in her own front yard. The arrest report of the incident also contains an apparent discrepancy from what is seen in the woman’s own video.

Londoners took to the streets to protect their neighbourhoods on Tuesday night after Britain’s worst rioting in a generation. A group of anti-rioters marched through Enfield, in north London, aiming to deter looters. “We are the Enfield anti-rioting squad,” said one local resident. “You want to riot our place, we will riot you mate. This is our area not your area.” Another Enfield resident said his fellow vigilantes were the “people that are London, not the small minority that are going around smashing up stuff, that have got nothing to wake up for in the morning.”

By all accounts, the Redneck Olympics was a huge success.About 2,600 people attended the three-day event on Harold Brooks’ land last weekend. There were no arrests, and the one ambulance visit was for a bee sting, Brooks said.

But the party ended Monday when Brooks received a call from the legal division of the U.S. Olympic Committee. Brooks said the USOC told him he had to change the name of his event or face a lawsuit.

He was told the word “Olympics” is the property of the Olympic Committee. Brooks said it’s a case of a large group bullying a small businessman.

“I said, ‘I’m not basing it on your Olympics; I’m basing it on the Olympics in Greece,’” Brooks said.

“I understand we can’t use the word ‘Pepsi,’ but we can use the word ‘soda.’ The Olympics has been around for thousands of years.” He likened it to taking out a copyright on the word “fair” and trying to force the Fryeburg Fair to change its name.

Most bacterial infections can be treated with antibiotics such as penicillin, discovered decades ago. However, such drugs are useless against viral infections, including influenza, the common cold, and deadly hemorrhagic fevers such as Ebola.Now, in a development that could transform how viral infections are treated, a team of researchers at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory has designed a drug that can identify cells that have been infected by any type of virus, then kill those cells to terminate the infection.

✪ Editorial: An Argument for Surrealism in Games

The problem I find most troubling with realism in games, is that video games are inherently unrealistic. By definition, even, video games must adhere to some sense of absurdity. In Uncharted, no matter how realistic and convincing the characters and environments may be, the fact is that Nathan Drake can take a hell of a lot of damage, and is a little too good with every gun known to man. In Call of Duty, if realism is such a coveted aspect of the series, why does your character only bleed out of his eyes, and why is damage rarely permanent? The “game” part of these games keeps them from being truly realistic, and in turn makes them even less believable. Characters like Link, or even Master Chief, are believable in even the most absurd situations, as the worlds that they belong to don’t try to conform to the world that we live in.

The Euro Union navy who patrol these waters would not interfere because they feared there could be casualties (!) All explanations are in Russian with a single exception of when a wounded pirate says something in English and the Russian soldier says “This is not a fishing boat.” All conversations between the commandos are in Russian but the pictures speak for themselves. The soldiers freed their compatriots and the tanker. The Russian Navy Commandos moved the pirates back to the pirate vessel, searched it for weapons and explosives, then left and blew it up with all remaining pirates hand-cuffed to it.They used the anti-piracy laws of the 18th and 19th centuries where the captain of the rescuing ship has the right to decide what to do with the pirates. Usually, they were legally hanged with no lawyers or court proceedings required. Perhaps from now on, Russian ships will not be targets for Somalian pirates.Other nations might take note. “Без суда и следствия”. Смотрите, девочки.

The pair of puppets has long been rumored to be a veiled representation of a gay couple, though the Children’s Television Workshop has denied that this is the case.The petition echoes the message of the “It Gets Better” project, founded in 2010 following the suicides of a number of young gay men, including Tyler Clementi, Billy Lucas and others.

Reactions thus far have been mixed. An editorial in the New York Daily News, headlined “Folks who want a gay marriage for Bert and Ernie of ‘Sesame Street’ need to get over themselves,” went on to say:

“Why stop there? Why not march Yogi Bear and Boo Boo down the aisle, too?… Some stages of life – for example, the years from 2 to 4 – must be walled off from the passions of adults.”

Alyssa Rosenberg at Think Progress agrees, but for different reasons. If Bert and Ernie were gay, she would be all for a marriage, but Rosenberg has a problem with same-sex roommates being equated with gay couples.

Protect IP has been criticized for its ambiguity as to what constitutes an infringing website. To illustrate this, websites such as The Pirate Bay and WikiLeaks who have been accused of distributing copyrighted content in the past, could have all of their search results blocked on search engines, effectively making them invisible. This raises serious concerns about free speech when the blocked website also hosts legitimate and lawful content. Under the act, these blocks can be enforced without notifying the infringing site and therefore eradicates the presumption of innocence.

They piled onto the shuttle late, after finally getting corralled by their minder, who was nursing a head wound with an ice bag wrapped in a towel. They piled in, niggering everything in sight, motherfucking the driver, boasting into the air unbidden about getting their dicks sucked and calling everyone in the area a faggot. Then one of them lit a joint (or a pipe, I didn’t look) and told the driver to shut the fuck up nigger and smoked it anyway. A female passenger tried to engage one of them in conversation, but he just stared at her with a dead-to-me stare while his seatmate flipped double birds in her face.The whole trip they complained about not being at a McDonalds and repeatedly shouted for the motherfucker to pull over so they could get some fucking McDonalds nigger. Interspersed with the McDonalds requests were shouted boasts about how often they masturbated and fucked bitches nigger and got paid like a motherfucker fifty grand like a motherfucker

America is a mixture of many types of speech reflecting the cultures and backgrounds of its teeming millions. One type that is widely used, though not given recognition, serves a very important function in the lives of many people. This is the language of the homosexual.There are 2 ways in which homosexual slang is used. The first is when it is employed by the outsider or “straight” individual to describe or refer to homosexuals ar.d their activities. In this way the slang mirrors society’s disapproval and permits a person to talk of homosexuals without incurring any guilt by association.

The other, or “inside” language, is used by the homosexual and serves several purposes other than simple communication. It helps to transform the feeling of being a despised minority to that of a special in-group.

If you happen to know anything about Steve Albini, it’s almost certainly one or both of the following two things: (1) His reputation as a producer (Nirvana, Pixies, PJ Harvey) and musician (Big Black, Shellac) is unassailable, and (2) He’s a bit of a curmudgeon, and he’s not at all shy about it. Albini’s most recent outburst came at the expense of Sonic Youth, whom he more or less blamed earlier this year for corrupting independent music. Well, “most recent outburst” until this weekend, actually, when Albini went at Odd Future.

Last year’s floods, which affected around 20 million people across the country, weren’t a natural disaster – they were a mistake on the part of our government.The government, in its effort to produce water, melted glaciers in the north using lasers. The experiment went awry and things got out of control, bringing forth the worst floods in the history of Pakistan.

You might dismiss the aforementioned as absurd, but this is precisely what most people ardently believe in flood-hit areas from Muzaffargarh to Rajanpur.

Though a year has passed since the floods hit and rehabilitation work is under way, locals in stricken areas still believe in conspiracy theories.

“Not just the common people but elected representatives of our areas have time and again said that lasers were used to melt glaciers and the water went out of control,” a local in Muzaffargarh, Malik Mureed, told The Express Tribune.

The NYPD has formed a new unit to track troublemakers who announce plans or brag about their crimes on Twitter, MySpace and Facebook.Newly named Assistant Commissioner Kevin O’Connor, one of the department’s online and gang gurus, has been put in charge of the new juvenile justice unit. He and his staff will mine social media, looking for info about troublesome house parties, gang showdowns and other potential mayhem, sources said.

The power of social media to empower both criminals and cops has been on full display in London this week, where riots and looting have been spreading dramatically.

A new leukemia treatment is wowing even the researchers behind its creation, providing results beyond their wildest expectations.It’s virtually eradicated cancerous leukemia cells in the first three patients it’s been tested on.

In two of the first three patients the process was tested on the treatment completely destroyed the most common type of leukemia, according to MSNBC. In the third patient, the treatment seems to have reduced the cancerous cells to 70 percent of what they once were.

“Within three weeks, the tumors had been blown away, in a way that was much more violent than we ever expected,” said senior author Carl June, MD told Penn Medicine.

In news that makes you wonder if anyone from the US Department of Energy has watched the Terminator films, physicists at the Argonne National Laboratory have successfully created self-assembling micro-robots that are just 0.5mm (500 micron) in diameter.Formed out of minuscule ferromagnetic particles that float freely in a sandwich of water and oil, these micro-robots (microbots? nanobots?) are controlled with magnets. With the application of an alternating magnetic field that’s perpendicular to the immiscible mixture, the micro-particles assemble into spiked circles called asters, after the aster flower. Then, with a magnetic field that is parallel to the surface, the movements of these microbots can be controlled.

A study has found that the hustle and bustle of modern offices can lead to a 32% drop in workers well being and reduce their productivity by 15%.They have found that open plan offices create unwanted activity in the brains of workers that can get in the way of them doing the task at hand.

Open plan offices were first introduced in the 1950s and quickly became a popular as a way of laying out offices.

Having a clean and sterile desk can also leave employees with smaller brains, scientists claim.

These developments mean that we no longer have to worry just about what Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and other social sites do with our data; we have to worry about what they enable others to do, too. And it now seems that others will be able to do a lot.As reported in various privacy and security outlets like Kashmir Hill’s Forbes blog and Paul Roberts at ThreatPost, and demonstrated at last week’s Black Hat conference, the CMU researchers relied on just Facebook’s public profile information and off-the-shelf facial recognition software. Yet the CMU researchers were able to match Facebook users with their pictures on otherwise anonymous Match.com accounts. The researchers also had significant success taking pictures of experimental subjects and matching them to their Facebook profiles.

A man accused of disgusting McDonald’s patrons by popping his pimples was under arrest after customer complaints led to a brief chase by officers.It started Monday when customers of the McDonald’s located at 2404 Santa Barbara Blvd. alerted authorities to a man standing outside the restaurant for about 10 minutes squeezing away at the acne on his back. Events that followed with police ended in a brief chase and the arrest of the man, who allegedly gave a false name when confronted about the complaints.

Three of Italy’s best-known fashion houses are being accused of refusing to stop selling “killer jeans” that threaten the lives of workers in the poor countries where they are produced.The Clean Clothes Campaign began pressing in February for leading fashion manufacturers and retailers to ban sandblasting, a technique for producing denim garments with an artificially worn look. The large amounts of silica dust produced can lead to silicosis, a potentially lethal pulmonary disease.

The process was banned in Turkey in 2009 after evidence was produced to show that 46 former sandblasting operators had contracted silicosis

In a 1968 plane crash, the US military lost an atom bomb in Greenland’s Arctic ice. But this was no isolated case. Up to 50 nuclear warheads are believed to have gone missing during the Cold War, and not all of them are in unpopulated areas.

Twitter has refused to close the accounts of London rioters who used the service to spread unrest and insisted that Tweets must ‘continue to flow’.The US-based company said that ‘freedom of expression’ was essential and that information would be ‘kept flowing’.

Social networks have faced criticism for allowing rioters and looters to incite violence and public disorder across the country since riots began last Saturday in Tottenham.

✪ Hong Kong exchange trading disrupted as hackers target website

The Hong Kong stock exchange was forced to suspend trading in stocks including HSBC Holdings after hackers broke into the exchange’s website on Wednesday, preventing investors from accessing company announcements made during the midday break.”Our current assessment that this is a result of a malicious attack by outside hacking,” the chief executive of Hong Kong Exchanges & Clearing (HKEx) Charles Li told reporters after the company announced interim results.

A 25-year-old man sued the Gretna Police Department Tuesday, alleging his civil rights were violated by a police officer who sicced his canine on him without provocation, leading the dog to bite into his groin area and virtually sever his penis.cody_melancon.jpgView full sizeSusan Poag,The Times-PicayuneCody Melancon alleges his civil rights were violated by a police officer who sicced his canine on him without provocation.Cody Melancon, of Gretna, said Tuesday the attack left him sexually dysfunctional. A doctor has recommended sexual enhancement pills and he faces neurosurgery in hopes of restoring the use of his penis, which was almost completely severed by the police dog’s bites.“I don’t have any sensation down there,” Melancon said. “I can’t get an erection. I’m 25 years of age.”

✪ Teenage brides suffer pain and shame of fistula

“Nobody wants a woman who passes stools all the time and smells,” whispered Farhiya Mohamed Farah, explaining why her husband divorced her when she was pregnant with their second child.Farah, developed a hole between her vagina and rectum, causing feces to leak from her body, after giving birth to her first child at age 18 while fleeing gunfire in Somalia.

The man who wanted to take you higher went to court in Los Angeles Wednesday on a crack charge stemming from his Apr. 1 arrest. Sly Stone (aka, Sylvester Stewart) pled not guilty to possessing cocaine.

Sly Stone Stewart was a passenger in the car stopped when it was stopped for a traffic violation. A search located the freebase coke. “The vehicle was not his,” says lawyer James Silverstein. “Stewart should never had charges filed against him.”

According to a recent study on sports drinks led by Mark Wolff DDS, a professor at NYU’s College of Dentistry, top selling sports drinks can lead to softening of tooth enamel and erosion.

Dr. Wolff explains: “Sports drinks are very acidic drinks. When they become your soft drink, your fluid, then you run the real risk of very significant effects, such as etching the teeth and actually eroding the dentin if you have exposed roots.” Dentin is the dental tissue underneath enamel.

Photographer Danny Lyon spent two months snapping pictures of the daily life in the borough — exploring Bushwick, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Fort Green and Park Slope among other neighborhoods.

Synthetic drugs that use legal compounds but mimic the highs of everything from marijuana to cocaine are proliferating among do-it-yourself pharma labs across the country. Bad trips—and fatal side effects—are increasing, too

White House declares prescription drug abuse in US ‘alarming’ as thousands flock to Florida – the home of oxycodone pill mills

✸ Man accused of killing father found not guilty by reason of insanity; defense blamed Red Bull

A Florida man has been found not guilty by reason of insanity in the slaying of his father in a case where the defense claimed that an energy drink contributed to his mental unbalance.

Pinellas County Judge Nancy Moate Ley ordered Wednesday that 42-year-old Stephen Coffeen be sent to a state mental hospital rather than stand trial for murder in the December 2009 suffocation death of his 83-year-old father.

The case made national headlines after a doctor suggested the consumption of the energy drink Red Bull along with sleep deprivation contributed to Coffeen’s temporary insanity. The judge discounted that assertion.

The idea, I guess, is that on the black market most coca paste usually goes towards making cocaine hcl, so that anyone wanting to make crack has traditionally used cocaine hcl. What’s happening now is that more people are realizing they can skip the cocaine hcl period and make a cheaper, purer product straight from the paste.

Another poster suggested it might not actually be purer at all, but it might actually be the impurities (not to mention residues left by gasoline or kerosene) that create a different experience:

Hey, Hoes, Let’s Go!

I’ve been in desperate need of a clone to help out for many moons now. While work is fun, there’s not much time to relax which is important to maintain a good self. Then one day I got wind of a place in Akihabara called Clone Factory. Went along to get my clone made and at the same time film what goes on for Culture Japan but didn’t quite get the clone that I was looking for…

✸ Fukushima Erupts With Steam/Smoke 7/14/11 [Video]

Thanks Billoney

✸ Hyperflesh – Realistic Big Baby Head Masks

School officials violated the First Amendment rights of students when they suspended them for posting raunchy faux profiles of their principals on the social-networking site MySpace, according to a pair of 3rd Circuit opinions. The 3rd Circuit revisited both cases after three-judge panels came to differing conclusions on the cases in February 2010. In western Pennsylvania’s Hermitage School District, Justin Layshock used his grandmother’s computer to post a phony profile of Hickory High School principal Eric Trosch. Layshock posted fake answers to online surveys and listed Trosch’s interests as “Transgender” and “Appreciators of Alcoholic Beverages.” He also listed “Steroids International” as a club to which Trosch belonged. Word of the profile spread quickly among students at Hickory High School, and students soon created three other bogus profiles of Trosch on MySpace, each more vulgar and offensive than Layschock’s.

We traveled to the manufacturing town of Xintang to investigate why thousands of migrant workers suddenly took to the streets just a week ago.

We knew the unrest was triggered by what appeared to be a minor event — a pregnant migrant worker and her husband got in a scuffle with city officials and she ended up falling on the ground.

However, the ferocity by which this dispute exploded in a massive conflagration, pitting thousands of enraged workers against hundreds of riot police, took many by surprise.

The unrest seems to belie the image of China as a bustling economy going from strength to strength, enriching the lives of millions across the country, especially in the industrial south. But the problem is many people feel they are not getting their fair share of the rapid growth.

Thanks to the trillions of dollars that the Chinese have made flooding our shores with cheap products, China is now in a position of tremendous economic power. So what is China going to do with all of that money? One thing that they have decided to do is to buy up pieces of the United States and set up “special economic zones” inside our country from which they can continue to extend their economic domination. One of these “special economic zones” would be just south of Boise, Idaho and the Idaho government is eager to give it to them.

Two minutes into Antolin Aguirre’s testimony, Sen. Chris Harris, a Republican from Arlington, interrupted asking Aguirre’s interrupter, “Did I understand him correctly that he has been here since 1988?” Harris asked. “Why aren’t you speaking in English then?”

Through his interpreter, Aguirre said Spanish is his “first language and since it is his first time giving testimony he would rather do it in Spanish.”

“It is insulting to us,” Sen. Harris fired back. “It is very insulting. And if he knows English, he needs to be speaking in English.”

✸ Everything We’re Doing Now Was Planned BEFORE 9/11

9/11 didn’t change anything. It was simply an excuse to implement existing plans.

The IRS mistakenly sent the tax refund money, meant for a 67-year-old woman, to McDow, instead, reports local news station KCAL. The Los Angeles woman reportedly failed to inform the IRS that she had closed the bank account she had filed with them, and the account number was subsequently assigned to McDow.

When the woman discovered that McDow had been the recipient of her refund, she called him and demanded her money back. McDow, in turn, offered to pay back the balance in monthly payments, as he had already spent $60,000 paying off student loans and his home mortgage. Unsatisfied with the suggested size of the monthly payment, the woman declined the offer, according to KCAL.

McDow was subsequently arrested and charged with one felony of grand theft by misappropriation of lost property. He reportedly faces four years imprisonment and is currently being held on bail for the exact amount he first received: $110,000.

Diver trying to swim in the lake Nahuel Huapi, which is covered by a thick layer of volcanic ash emitted by the volcano Puyehue.

Piercing kittens to give them a “goth” appearance is cruel, a panel of Pennsylvania judges has ruled.

Three judges of the Superior Court of Pennsylvania on Monday affirmed a lower court conviction for animal cruelty of a dog groomer who had offered “gothic” kittens on eBay.

The groomer, Holly Crawford of Sweet Valley, Pa., offered the kittens for $100; Judge Kate Ford Elliott wrote in a 19-page opinion that “metal protruded from the kittens’ small bodies, pierced through their ears and necks, and at least one of these kittens also had an elastic band tied around its tail, an attempt at docking, which is a procedure to stem the blood flow so that the tail eventually falls off.”

America has got a part of what it wanted from “uprisings” in Mideast and “noflyzone” fascism over sovereign Libya: high standard Libyan oil, and the terrorist rebels have helped the NATO rogues to transport Libyan energy resources into USA- the nation of their real bosses. Will any American or Britisher do such sacrifices against their country for Libya or any other Arab nations? The CIA-pre-paid Libyan rebel terrorists are traitors for Libya but for the NATO terror syndicate nations, they are the true patriots!

Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday blasted the Nuclear Regulatory Commission during an appearance before a Senate panel for asking the Department of Justice to intervene in an Entergy Corp. lawsuit against the state of Vermont over the future of the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant. “I was deeply disturbed that the commissioners of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission today refused to make public what, as I understand it, was a 3-to-2 vote recommending that the Department of Justice take Entergy’s side in their lawsuit against Vermont,” Sanders said after the hearing.

“In my view, the federal government should not intervene in the lawsuit that Entergy has filed against the state of Vermont. Federal law is very clear that states have the authority to reject nuclear power for economic reasons and that is what the Vermont state Senate did last year by a strong 26-to-4 bipartisan vote,” the senator added.

The Soviet Union conducted an atmospheric test of an EMP weapon in 1962 over Kazakhstan whose pulse wave set on fire a power station 300 kilometers away and destroyed it within 10 seconds.

Such a weapon — equal to a massive solar flare such as the “solar maxima” predicted by NASA to occur in 2012 — poses “substantial risk to equipment and operation of the nation’s power grid and under extreme conditions could result in major long term electrical outages,” said Joseph McClelland of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in Senate testimony last month.

A New Mexico football player’s saggy pants led to his arrest at San Francisco International Airport, police said.

Sgt. Michael Rodriguez said 20-year-old Deshon Marman, a safety for the Lobos, was boarding a flight Wednesday to Albuquerque, N.M., when a U.S. Airways employee noticed his pants were “below his buttocks, but above the knees, and his boxer shorts were showing.”

Rodriguez told the San Francisco Chronicle that the employee asked Marman to pull up his pants, but he refused. She then asked him to leave the plane.

The officer says that after 15 minutes, Marman got off the plane and was charged with trespassing, battery and resisting arrest. He was being held on $11,000 bail, according to the newspaper. His arraignment is scheduled for Thursday afternoon.

His name is Francisco Domingo Joaquim but he’s better known as “Chiquinho.” I don’t actually know what that means, but I’m sure it has something to do with the fact that his mouth is nearly 7 inches long.As you can see from this photo, it’s so wide he can fit a soda can inside it… sideways.

The Streisand effect is a primarily online phenomenon in which an attempt to hide or remove a piece of information has the unintended consequence of perversely causing the information to be publicized more widely and to a greater extent than would have occurred if no contrary action had been attempted. It is named after American entertainer Barbra Streisand, following a 2003 incident in which her attempts to suppress photographs of her residence inadvertently generated further publicity.

As ThinkGeek needs to up the ante each year, in 2010 it decided to create a product called Canned Unicorn Meat. The tag line for this new delicacy? “Pâté is passé. Unicorn, the new white meat.” It promised to be an “excellent source of sparkles!”It was, of course, fake.

Although it is probably clear to most nerds and wildlife experts, the National Pork Board, an organization devoted to pork and related businesses and farms, saw a threat to the national brand of pork, otherwise known as “the other white meat.” So the organization sent ThinkGeek a cease-and-desist letter.

Your digital camera may embed metadata into photographs with the camera’s serial number or your location. Your printer may be incorporating a secret code on every page it prints which could be used to identify the printer and potentially the person who used it. If Apple puts a particularly creepy patent it has recently applied for into use, you can look forward to a day when your iPhone may record your voice, take a picture of your location, record your heartbeat, and send that information back to the mothership.This is traitorware: devices that act behind your back to betray your privacy.

Farmer Jia Kebing noticed a small bump on this cow’s forehead when it was born two years ago but didn’t expect it to grow into a 20cm (8in) horn.

On the day of release he marched to a cinema in Minnesota to see the sequel he had been waiting 28 years for, but found that cinema bosses would not admit him in his competition-winning, figure-hugging costume.

Our own sun might represent the best communications device around, if only we could harness its power, scientists say.If the sun’s gravity could be used to create a giant telescope, people could send and receive intensely magnified signals that could allow us to call an alien civilization, some researchers propose.

According to Einstein’s general relativity, the sun’s behemoth mass warps space-time around it, which actually bends light rays passing by like a giant lens. If a detector was placed at the right focal distance to collect the light, the resulting image would be extremely magnified.

The only catch is, the nearest focal point is about 550 times the distance between the Earth and the sun.

I have to admit that I’d imagined that in most countries in the world, putting toilet paper down the toilet was the accepted method of disposal, but if you’re a Western European or similar type of person and you decide to do a bit of travelling, where you put the paper can suddenly turn into a bit of a problem – at least until you get the hang of the country and their rules.

Whistles, catcalls and lewd come-ons from strangers are all too familiar to New York City women, who say they are harassed multiple times a day as they walk down the street. Now lawmakers are examining whether to do something to discourage it.A City Council committee heard testimony Thursday from women who said men regularly follow them, yell at them and make them feel unsafe and uncomfortable. Advocates told stories of preteens and teenagers being hounded by adult men outside city schools and pleaded for government to address the problem.

Phusion Projects, LLC, the makers of Four Loko and other forbidden caffeinated booze drinks, is suffering from two major problems. First, now that its drinks have been banned by multiple states including Washington over reports that it turns people into walking vomit factories, its products are becoming harder to find. And second, the PR shitstorm that’s descended on the company in the wake of the bans has left it desperately trying to improve its image. Well, as Brandchannel reports today: there’s an app for that.It’s called “Four Mobile” and it’s being billed as a hand-held electronic responsibility promoter. What this amounts to, basically, is a Google search that passes for a “taxi finder,” a statement on drunk driving, alcohol abuse and how they’re both bad and a nifty “product finder” that points thirsty customers toward their nearest Four Loko outlet.

According to a report by nonprofit consumer advocacy group MyWireless, state and local taxes on e-books could bump up the total price of digital literature by 21%. While e-books have always been far cheaper than their hard-copy counterparts, such high taxes could drive costs higher than physical books, reports SmartMoney.Meanwhile, with budget deficits booming and states required to balance their budgets, the likelihood of state taxes on downloadable products is only going to grow.

✪ Armageddon-Fearing Pilgrims Flock To French Village

Armageddon-fearing pilgrims were flocking to a village deep in the southern French hills after a countdown was started to the end of the world, which stood Thursday at a mere 729 days to go.Followers of the Mayan calendar believe the mountain in the Corbieres hills overlooking the village of Bugarach, east of the Pyrenees, was endorsed by aliens as a safe place to survive the demise of civilization.

Philadelphia police said this likely won’t be the last time that social networking leads to misinformation in investigations.“There’s really no vetting process, you can put any photo out on Facebook,” Evers said. “The only one that should be giving out a photo is the police.”

While many people may mock the idea of accepting Facebook friend requests from strangers, that might be just what a long-term drug addict needs. An experiment being run in Amsterdam at the moment is exploring the idea.

Hundreds of previously classified reports detailing claims of UFO sightings and alien encounters have been released by the New Zealand military. Here are some examples:
A man who in 1995 met the giant alien with size 440 shoes says the being told him that on dying humans ascend as hydrogen atoms. “You will remain in hydrogen form for 150 years. Then it will change to sodium.”

The entertainment industry has a new billion-dollar baby.Activision Blizzard announced yesterday its “Call of Duty: Black Ops” video game has racked up $1 billion in sales after just 42 days on the market.

A 2001 biography of Crosby by Village Voice jazz critic Gary Giddins says that Louis Armstrong’s influence on Crosby “extended to his love of marijuana.” Bing smoked it during his early career when it was legal and “surprised interviewers” in the 1960s and 70s by advocating its decriminalization, as did Armstrong. Crosby even recommended that his son smoke pot instead of drinking alcohol, if Wikipedia is to be believed. They quote his son as saying that “There were other times when marijuana was mentioned and he’d get a smile on his face….”

✪ Cunnilingus Outside The Waffle House

A report from the Washington Post on Wednesday describes an effort by the CIA to assess the impact of WikiLeaks on US national security. The effort is known as the WikiLeaks Task Force. Apparently it’s also commonly referred to as ‘WTF’ around the halls in Langley. While that acronym may be cracking some sardonic grins, the Post story also reveals a CIA perspective that is no laughing matter.

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A nurse claims the chairman of a hospital’s surgery department injected her with “truth serum” during a job interview, then “pulled his pants down … and injected himself in the groin area,” proceeded to ask her about her sexual fantasies, and offered her $1,000 to strip. She sued Presbyterian Intercommunity Hospital and Dr. Jeffrey W. Kronson, for assault, battery, sexual harassment and other charges, in Superior Court.

The artwork reminds me of heroin/dust bag art

Still dazed after being anaesthetised for three hours, a pedigree pet is hauled upright to show off its new tattoo. The controversial “body enhancement” was carried out on Mickey – a rare Canadian Hairless breed also known as a Sphynx cat. His female owner was said to be delighted with the Tutankhamun design inked on to his chest at a tattoo parlour.

In 1973, ABC commissioned a pilot for a “Mad” series. Titled “The Mad Magazine TV Special,” this pilot was everything that “Mad TV” wasn’t: it was completely animated, it fairly accurately captured the essence of the comics, and it was often funny (the hospital sketch in particular is a hoot). Not to imply that it was truly great (and “The Oddfather” sketch drags on far too long), but it certainly had a lot of potential for greatness. Unfortunately the honchos at ABC didn’t feel the same way, they deemed the show too risqué for television.

♆ The Alleged Tupac Rape

“So you not trying to suck my dick?” “What!” I screamed. “What are you talking about!” Tupac raised his voice. “You know you want to suck my dick, bitch! Don’t fucking lie.” I burst into tears and grabbed my phone. “I have to get out of here.” Tupac kept going. He was making no sense, cursing and yelling. He said something about Big and the East Coast. “But … but … I thought y’all was friends,” I said. At this point, I could barely speak clearly because I was crying so hard. “Whatever. You know you wanna be my bitch,” he said, before going into the bedroom area and slamming the door.

Just as we began kissing, the door opened and I heard people entering. As I started to turn to see who it was, Tupac grabbed my head and told me, “Don’t move.” I looked down at him and he said, “Don’t worry, baby, these are my brothers and they ain’t going to hurt you. We do everything together.” I started to shake my head, “No, no, Pac, I came here to be with you. I came here to see you. I don’t want to do this.” I started to rise up off the bed but he brutally slammed my head down. My lips and face came crashing down hard onto his penis, he squeezed the back of my neck, and I started to gag. Tupac and Nigel held me down while Trevor forced his penis into my mouth. I felt hands tearing my shoes off, ripping my stockings and panties off. I couldn’t move; I felt paralyzed, trapped, and I started to black out. They leered at my body. “This bitch got a fat ass, she’s fine.” While they laughed and joked to one another

BP is warning Congress that if lawmakers pass legislation that bars the company from getting new offshore drilling permits, it may not have the money to pay for all the damages caused by its oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.